be a mere drop
in the ocean of misery around.

"Even if we could supply their every want, and give each family a decent
home," she said to Bertie one evening as she walked back with him, "they
would not know how to keep it or to enjoy it. If the men, and the women
too, have not the tremendous necessity to labor that they may live, they
relax and become mere brutes. We must, above all things, educate them."

"Yes, education is certainly necessary; but the most ignorant being who
has laid hold on the Rock of Ages, who has received the spirit of
adoption whereby he can cry, 'Abba, Father!' has a means of elevation
and refinement beyond all that books and art can teach," cried Bertie,
with more warmth than he usually allowed himself to show.

"You believe that? I cannot say I do. We need other means of moral and
intellectual life besides spiritualism. At least I have tried to be
religious, but I always get weary."

"That is only because you have not found the straight and true road,"
said Bertie, earnestly. "Pray, my dear Miss Liddell--pray, and light
will be given you."

"Thank you--you are very good," murmured Katherine "At all events,
though we can do but little, it is a comfort to help some of these poor
creatures, especially the children and old people."

"It is," he returned. "And if it be consolatory to minister to their
physical wants, how much more to feed their immortal souls!"

Katherine was silent for a few minutes, and then said: "It is impossible
they can think much about their souls when they suffer so keenly in
their bodies. Poverty and privation which destroy self-respect cannot
allow of spiritual aspiration. Is it to be always like this--one class
steeped in luxury, the other grovelling in cruel want?"

"Our Lord says, 'Ye have the poor always with you,'" returned Bertie.
"Nor can we hope to see the curse of original sin lifted from life here
below until the great manifestation; in short, till Shiloh come."

"Do you think so? I do not like to think that Satan is too strong for
God," said Katherine, thoughtfully.

Bertie replied by exhorting her earnestly not to trust to mere human
reason, to accept the infallible word of God, "and so find safety and
rest." Katherine did not reply.

"I think you could help me in a difficult case," said Bertie, a few days
after this conversation.

"Indeed!" said Katherine, looking up from the book she was reading by
the fire after dinner. "What help can I poss